Computer systems contain large amounts of data. This data includes personal data, such as financial data, customer/client/patient contact data, audio/visual data, and much more. This data also includes information related to the correct operation of the computer system, such as operating system files, application files, user settings, and so on. With the increased reliance on computer systems to store critical information, the importance of protecting data has grown. Traditional data protection systems, such as backup systems, receive an identification of a file location to protect, then create one or more secondary copies containing the contents of the protected up location. These secondary copies can then later be used to restore the original data should anything happen to the original data.
In corporate environments, protecting data is generally part of a routine process that is performed for many computer systems within an organization. For example, a company might back up critical computing systems related to e-commerce such as databases, file servers, web servers, and so on. The company may also back up computing systems used by each of its employees, such as those used by an accounting department, marketing department, engineering, and so forth.
Because of the amount of data in an organization, secondary copies of data for an organization's computing systems are often very large and can require the purchase of expensive storage devices and storage media. The restoration of data in the event of data loss is also slowed by the large size of the secondary copy. As the amount of protected data increases, locating and restoring data requires more actions to be taken. For example, it may be necessary to search many backup tapes to find the correct data. The quantity of secondary copy media, such as tapes, may mean that some secondary copy media has been moved offsite such that it must first be retrieved before data can be recovered from it. Each of these factors increases the cost of protecting data and the time required to recover data in the event of data loss. Quick recovery of data is often critical to today's businesses, and any additional delay could affect business operations and customers' satisfaction with the business.
Management of data in this way also consumes resources, and it is often desirable to minimize impact to computing systems to provide maximum availability for handling customer or employee requests. Some organizations defer activities such as performing backups until off hours, such as early in the morning to reduce the impact to the availability of systems. However, recovery of a file may be needed during business hours or at other inconvenient times, and choosing the best way to retrieve the data is important for maintaining the availability of the system.
There is a need for a system that overcomes the above problems, as well as one that provides additional benefits.
In the drawings, the same reference numbers and acronyms identify elements or acts with the same or similar functionality for ease of understanding and convenience. To easily identify the discussion of any particular element or act, the most significant digit or digits in a reference number refer to the Figure number in which that element is first introduced (e.g., element 110 is first introduced and discussed with respect to FIG. 1).